Foreign Policy Research Institute E-Notes A Catalyst for Ideas Distributed via Email and Posted at www.fpri.org June 2011 CHINA AND INDIA: A RIVALRY TAKES SHAPE By Harsh V. Pant Harsh V. Pant is Reader in International Relations at King’s College London in the Department of Defence Studies. He is also an associate with the King’s Centre for Science and Security Studies and an affiliate with the King’s India Institute. His current research is focused on Asia-Pacific security and defense issues. His latest book is The US-India Nuclear Pact: Policy, Process, and Great Power Politics (Oxford University Press, 2011). With the world riveted by Chinese aggressiveness against Japan and Southeast Asian states in recent months, one country has not been surprised: India. After all, New Delhi has been grappling with the challenge of China’s rapid rise for some time now. Bilateral ties between China and India nosedived so dramatically in 2009 that Indian strategists were even predicting “the year of the Chinese attack on India”; it was suggested that China would attack India by 2012 primarily to divert attention from its growing domestic troubles. This suggestion received widespread coverage in the Indian media, which was more interested in sensationalizing the issue than interrogating the claims. Meanwhile, the official Chinese media picked up the story and gave it another spin. It argued that while a Chinese attack on India is highly unlikely, a conflict between the two neighbors could occur in one scenario: an aggressive Indian policy toward China about their border dispute, forcing China to take military action. The Chinese media went on to speculate that the “China will attack India” line might just be a pretext for India to deploy more troops to the border areas. RHETORIC AND REALITY This curious exchange reflects an uneasiness that exists between the two Asian giants, as they continue their ascent in the global inter-state hierarchy. Even as they sign loftily worded documents year after year, the distrust between the two is actually growing at an alarming rate. True, economic cooperation and bilateral political as well as socio-cultural exchanges are at an all time high; China is India’s largest trading partner. Yet this cooperation has done little to assuage each country’s concerns about the other’s intentions. The two sides are locked in a classic security dilemma, where any action taken by one is immediately interpreted by the other as a threat to its interests. At the global level, the rhetoric is all about cooperation, and indeed the two sides have worked together on climate change, global trade negotiations and demanding a restructuring of global financial institutions in view of the global economy’s shifting center of gravity. At the bilateral level, however, mounting tensions reached an impasse last year, when China took its territorial dispute with India all the way to the Asian Development Bank. There China blocked India’s application for a loan that included money for development projects in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China continues to claim as part of its own territory. Also, the suggestion by the Chinese to the U.S. Pacific fleet commander last year that the Indian Ocean should be recognized as a Chinese sphere of influence has raised hackles in New Delhi. China’s lack of support for the U.S.-India civilian nuclear energy cooperation pact, which it tried to block at the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), and its obstructionist stance about bringing the terror masterminds of the November 2008 Mumbai attacks to justice have further strained ties. Sino-Indian frictions are growing, and the potential for conflict remains high. Alarm is rising in India because of frequent and strident Chinese claims about the Line of Actual Control in Arunachal Pradesh and Sikkim, where Indians have complained of a dramatic rise in Chinese intrusions into Indian territory over the last few years, most along the border in Arunachal Pradesh, which China refers to as “Southern Tibet.” China has upped the ante on the border issue. It has been regularly protesting against the Indian prime minister’s visit to Arunachal Pradesh, asserting its claims over the territory. What has caught most observers of Sino-Indian ties by surprise, however, is the Beijing’s vehemence in contesting recent Indian administrative and political action in the state--even denying visas to Indian citizens of Arunachal Pradesh. The recent rounds of boundary negotiations have been a disappointing failure, with a growing perception in India that China is less willing to adhere to earlier political understandings about how to address the boundary dispute. Even the rhetoric has degenerated to the point that a Chinese analyst connected to China’s Ministry of National Defense claimed, in an article last year, that China could “dismember the so-called ‘Indian Union’ with one little move” into as many as 30 states. A NEW ASSERTIVENESS The possibility of an intimate U.S.-India military relationship has generated fears of encirclement in Beijing. India’s position astride China’s key maritime shipping lanes has made the prospect of a Washington-Delhi axis particularly worrisome. Pakistan, of course, has always been a crucial foreign policy asset for China, but with India’s rise and U,S.-India rapprochement, its role in China’s grand strategy is bound to grow even further. Not surprisingly, recent revelations about China's shift away from a three-decades’ old cautious approach on Jammu and Kashmir, its increasing military presence in Pakistan, planning infrastructure linking Xinjiang and Gwadar, issuing stapled visas to residents of Jammu and Kashmir and supplying nuclear reactors to Pakistan, all confirm a new intensity behind China’s old strategy of using Pakistan to secure its interests in the region. China has gone even further than Pakistan in defining the Kashmir issue. While Pakistan insists that Kashmir is a disputed territory, recent Chinese positions have made it clear that Beijing believes Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) is Pakistani territory with India’s Kashmir state is the only part of the province that is disputed. Pakistan seems to have ceded responsibility for the Gilgit-Baltistan area of PoK to China as the reported presence of 7,000-10,000 PLA troops there. 1 The real concern for India, however, is the number of projects that China has undertaken in these areas and that footprint is likely to increase much larger. Though Indian political leadership continues to believe that Beijing is not a short-term threat to India but needs to be watched over the long-term, Indian defense officials have increasingly been warning bluntly about the growing disparity between the two Asian powers. The Indian naval chief has warned that India neither has “the capability nor the intention to match China force for force” in military terms, while the former Indian air chief has suggested that China posed more of a threat to India than Pakistan. China’s economic transformation has given it the capability to emerge as a major military power, spending as much as $65 billion a year on its defense forces. China’s military may or may not be able to take on the United States in the next few years, it will surely become the most dominant force in Asia. As a consequence of its growing capabilities, China has started asserting its military profile more significantly than before. In 2009, Chinese vessels tackled Somali pirates in the Middle East, the first time Chinese vessels operated outside Asia. Beijing is also considering sending combat troops abroad in support of United Nations peacekeeping efforts. Chinese military officers are openly talking of building the world’s strongest military and displacing the United States as global hegemon, by means of a war if need be. This might be a bit premature, as the U.S. military still remains far more advanced than China’s, which does not yet possess the capability to challenge the United States far from Chinese shores. It’s China’s neighbors, however, who are bearing the brunt of China’s new assertiveness. China’s sustained military build-up will continue over the next few years and will pose a challenge to Indian military planners as the Indian military’s modernization program is fast losing momentum. India needs to urgently review its defense preparedness vis-à-vis China. As the policy paralysis post-Mumbai has revealed, it seems to have lost even its conventional superiority over Pakistan. The real challenge for India, however, lies in China’s rise as a military power. India is speeding up its defense procurement but the process remains mired in bureaucratese and lacks any sense of strategic direction. Between 2010 and 2016, India is expected to spend $112 billion on capital defense acquisitions in what is being described as “one of the largest procurement cycles in the world.” The Indian Army is raising two new specialized infantry mountain divisions (35,000 soldiers) and an artillery brigade for Arunachal Pradesh, designed to redress the imbalance on the Sino-Indian border. It is also revising its conventional war-fighting doctrine that is aimed at deterring—as opposed to dissuading—China, though its meaning in operational terms remains far from clear. The Indian military is currently refining a “two-front war” doctrine to fend off Pakistan and China simultaneously. 2 According to an estimate by the Indian government’s own China Study Group, China now possesses the capability to move more than 10,000 troops to the Indian border in twenty to twenty-five days compared to three to six months a decade back. This is possible because of China’s efficient border management, and it has forced India into constructing border roads urgently.